My first visit to Dzaleka refugee camp.

My first experience of the camp is as vivid today as it was all those years ago.

It was November, 2022. We ( 2 girl friends and I…) took a little day trip to attend an arts and culture festival being held within camp grounds.

Tumaini festival was founded in 2014 by refugee poet and activist Menes Le Plume. The only one of it’s kind in the world, it has become an annual must do for the who’s who of the local and NGO expat community in Malawi. VISIT TUMAINI WEBSITE to learn more about this amazing initiative.

Upon arrival my senses found themselves assailed by a myriad of jarring and not all together pleasant stimuli. The parking grounds baked beneath African summer’s sun. Not a single tree to break it’s relentless onslaught.

Driving slowly, we sought out a space amongst hundreds of poorly parked vehicles. Dust followed in our wake, speaking to the desolation of the land.

Not much would grow here.

Fresh out of South Africa and still rather partial to 1st world living, I was ever ready to thumb my nose at any experience that did not meet the standards of the first world privileged lifestyle to which I had become accustomed.

Upon entering the camp, pampered nose firmly thumbed, I observed (with not a little distaste…) the sad scene that welcomed us.

Shabby shelters are thrown together from whatever is at hand: tarpaulin, old timber, stitched fabric…all patched into a fragile shade against the harsh open sky.

A scene of temporary economy, built on top of heat and dust and improvisation.

First, the arts and crafts stalls. Beautifully crafted local wares hidden within the crowded confines of small lean to structures built hastily out of whatever materials were available to camp residents at the time.

Next, the food and drink stalls.

Rows of tables form a kind of commercial corridor. Drinks deliberately displayed, local alongside imports. The blue cooler boxes holding reserve beers at a less than bath water temperature are visible behind the bare steel tables.

Then the food… Hand forged iron rounds atop a wood or gas fueled furnace. Multiple food stalls selling the exact same thing…chapati in all her (admittedly delicious) glory. Chapati and eggs. Chapati and salad. Chapati and chips.

Some food vendors boast seating areas for their guests, dusty crooked canvases beneath which rest plastic chairs and make-shift tables in varying stages of disrepair.

We choose a chapati stall with one such seating area and make ourselves as comfortable as we can.

Only once we’ve begun to eat do I notice the children. There are about 15 of them, circling us. Keeping a respectful distance at first but then mover closer as they notice me noticing them.

Their clothing is torn and baggy and they are all barefoot, ember legs powdered red with dust.

My first instinct is to be annoyed, but then my conscience/God/holy spirit pipes up from beyond the ego…” look at them. They are hungry. They are starving. They are CHILDREN…”

Job well done, oh ever prodding conscience of mine.

Now I am REALLY looking at them, some of them are the same age as my children. I force myself to imagine my 6 year old boys here, amongst these children… circling tourists like destitute vultures, barefoot and dirty, hoping for scraps of food.

This is is a nifty little psychological trick I stumbled across that helps cultivate empathy. I discovered that (or rather, it has been SHOWN to me. God using various life experiences to teach me this non-negotiable aspect of humanity. ) taking examples from my own life and superimposing them onto reality, results in empathy for an unknown person suffering a life experience that is foreign to me. I cannot speak for others, but in order for me to truly feel compassion and sympathy for another, I must first have suffered a similar thing myself.

I digress…back on topic.

And now my heart is aching for them.

“I cannot eat this food while all these starving children are watching. “

I call them closer, begin rationing out my chips. The story of Jesus multiplying bread and fish springs to mind. “I wonder if God will work a miracle here today…” is what’s going through my mind as the number of children queuing for chips grows.

Before the chips on my plate have had a chance to run out, the chapati chefs are upon us.

Grown women and men chasing children, with sticks. Like they’re rabid dogs.

I get angry. I yell at them to stop. They don’t. I am a mzungu and I don’t understand the way that things work here.

Once the chaos has settled, I am approached by 2 azunga human aid workers who are based in the camp.

“We appreciate that you felt moved to help the kids…but there are better ways to do it. “

I couldn’t have known then, that a simple offer of food can quickly turn dangerous in a place where there is a consistent scarcity of it. I wanted to help but I’d acted in ignorance.

This was the first of many humbling lessons I have learned.

“So what CAN I do to help?” I later asked Angela, who’d watched all the drama from the sidelines, calm where I had been frantic, knowing where I had been ignorant.

“Well…” her characteristic pause. ” We could come back here next week, do a survey with the schools, maybe they’d benefit from a school feeding programme.”

And that is exactly what we did.

The following week, Angela and I drove the 45 minutes or so to the camp, this time we’d venture deep into the settlement, seeking out schools.

Turns out, most established schools already have a feeding programme, so there wasn’t much we could do to help there.

What we did find, by speaking to the heads of various schools, was that there were not enough schools to accommodate the 20+thousand children that now call Dzaleka their home. Not enough by half, was their estimate.

And sooooooo…..

Home schooling for hope was born

The concept was simple but the impact would be huge : We’d supply parents who’s kids had no place in school, with learning materials and a syllabus and THEY would teach their children, at home.

It was the perfect solution!

We could get things up and running immediately, no waiting around for a school to be built. There would be relatively low overhead costs: basic stationary, workbooks, shared reading books and art supplies.

We’d utilize the Perivoli teacher training approach, designed specifically for low resource settings. We planned to host bi monthly meetings with the community parents to discuss their weekly teaching goals, get feed back…set up some sort of evaluation system so that we could assess where each child sat in terms of current learning level and progress…etc etc.

We had it allll planned out.

We would single handedly save the unschooled masses of Dzaleka!! HOORAH!

And then. Reality.

At the very first meeting, we met with 100 parents, 150 children varying in age from infancy to teenage-hood in tow. We all gathered in a hall big enough to accommodate… maybe 50?

No chairs. No tables. No lighting or even proper flooring. We sat together on cold concrete, babies on laps, toddlers running amok.

We did not speak or understand eachothers languages. (Lucky for us Dontien is an excellent linguist, fluent in many languages, and he acted as translator for us)

The parents understood the concept. They were enthusiastic about the and totally on board.

Yes! this was going to work!

Until…

“We cannot read or write ourselves.”

*Um. Slight snag.*

I found myself once again, blindsided by my own ignorance.

Turns out…NONE of the 100 parents present, could read or write.

And that’s how “homeshooling for hope” morphed into “adult illiteracy and home schooling.

(For hope. Maybe. One day there might be hope. Right now there is confusion and despondency. I’m not crying you’re crying!)

Moving swiftly along…

Adult illiteracy AND home schooling proved too large a task for me to manage. After a few months, I am sorry (and not slightly ashamed) to say that the project ran out of steam.

Dontien picked up the torch where I had dropped it, and his team of teachers have managed to keep some semblance of the project going all these years.

One other good did come out of our efforts. The Dzaleka christmas toy drive would never have happened if I hadn’t climbed out of my comfort zone in an (albeit misguided) effort to help another human being.

Every Christmas for the past 3 years, we have raised funds to buy Christmas presents for those 150 kids. It was the very least I could do.

If you are able to help out with the toy drive, please click here.

Writing this post has, if nothing else, been cathartic for me. I’ve carried a lot of shame with me all these years, around my ignorance…

and because I couldn’t make that project work. Writing this has helped me see that although yes, I was ignorant…I was also willing to learn. I was willing to let myself be humbled. I TRIED to make something work, I tried to serve. I haven’t stopped trying. Maybe one day my efforts will solidify into something consistent and sustainable.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

If you feel moved to donate to the cause, please follow this link.

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